The Resolute

There’s quite a few debates that make the rounds in Christian discussion. There’s the role of women in the church, charismatic vs pentecostal vs reformed theology (aka. The Role of the Spirit), the question of what to do at church, the authority of Scripture and what ‘baptism’ means.

On those, and many other issues, I generally have an opinion. I’ve read the bible and done some research and come to what I believe is the correct answer. On each of those issues there are people who disagree with me. And I can usually see where they are coming from, I can understand why they would want to argue their point of view. There’s a misunderstanding, a misreading, preconception or other motivation for the other point of view.

But there is one issues I just don’t get. Apparently some people insist that the King James Version of 1611 is the only true/authoritative English version of the Bible.

Yesterday there was a SMH video about Amazing Grace Baptist Church in America that is holding a “Halloween Book Burning” where they claim to be “burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV…”.

The KJV was a marvelous contribution to Christianity, it’s a good translation that allowed millions of people to read God’s Word. But to say it’s the only version we can read?… I don’t get it. Surely since 1611 there has been heaps of scholarly work to help the translators get our modern English closer to the original ancient Greek and Hebrew. And I’m not even sure of the difference between thou, thy and thee… And never mind the thousands of people who became Christians reading the Gideons NKJV bibles in hotels, or the NIV, ESV, Good News and the like.

This is such an issue in the US (just google ‘KJV debate‘) that Don Carson wrote a book called “King James Version Debate, The: A Plea for Realism“. John Piper recently answered the question “How can a pastor respectfully and lovingly move his congregation from the King James Version to a better translation?”

It’s such a privilege that I can go to my bookshelf and compare 5 or more translations of the Bible. I’m not burning any of them. And to call them ‘Satan’s'… please don’t give him the honour.

A Definition

Noun
mandate

An official or authoritative command; an order or injunction; a commission; a judicial precept.¹

That is not what I’m talking about.

Some background information

There has been some recent talk about one-to-one ministry. For example the September 2009 issue of The Briefing was titled “One sheep at a time: The power of one-to-one ministry“. A soon-to-be-released book by Colin Marshal and Tony Payne called “The Trestle and the Vine” also talks quite a bit about how one-to-one ministry is integral to the mission of a church.

The basic idea is that mature Christians disciple other Christians who go on to disciple other Christians who go on to disciple other…

What this looks like in practice

Man-dates

They are not like the kind of date I’d go on with my girlfriend.

I meet up with three guys from church. The basic idea is to catch up, read the Bible and pray together. So we usually try and set a date every two weeks or so, we might get lunch, grab a coffee, head to the park or just find a couch in the church building.

Just like a date with a woman is planned/unplanned, fun and intentional in it’s long term goals; so too is a man-date.

It’s planned in that you need to be disciplined to make time for it. It’s unplanned in that there is not really any preparation required, just grab a Bible and continue reading through a book together. They are fun in that we get to act like boys for a while, ie. talk about sport or computer games, fart, chuck a footy around, that kind of thing (something that’s missing from our busy lives too often). So it depends on who I’m meeting with, but we might get coffee or lunch, or head to the park or go fishing. And finally it has long term goals. I hope to see all the guys I meet up with growing in maturity, Godliness and one day themselves be meeting up with other guys to repeat the process.

Man-dates are good, find someone who you can meet up with regularly to share your life with, read the Bible and pray.

Women… you might need to find a new name (suggestions welcome), but it all applies just the same, except maybe the farting.

1. mandate. Wiktionary. Retrieved 14 October 2009 [↩]

When a new person arrives at Church there are a few basic principles to follow:

1. Don’t approach them, even if no one else has, after all you don’t want them to be overwhelmed. Anyway, you’re priority is to the regular members.

2. Make sure you have cool nicknames for everybody and lots of in-jokes so that new people realise how awesome you all are.

3. Use lots of unexplained Christian jargon.

4. Talk about all the great times you guys have at social gatherings they didn’t go to, and talk really excitedly about upcoming events but don’t invite them to them… that would be too intimidating. Anyway you don’t want newbies ruining the group dynamics.

5. If you see them sitting by themselves leave it that way, they probably enjoy being alone in a new place where they don’t know anyone.

6. When talking with them after Church be sure not to ask them what they think of the sermon or find out whether or not they’re a Christian, and definitely don’t explain the gospel to them… you might put them off!

7. Don’t introduce yourself or your friends, it’s up to them to work out everybody’s names.

8. After their third week it’s fine to ignore them, by then they should have already fit in with the group.

9. Stand in really tight circles talking loudly too make it hard for them to approach… it’s important to weed out the weak people.

10. Remember it’s up to them to adjust to the group dynamics, don’t make any allowances for them or the fact they’re new.

1. We’ve always done it that way.

2. Okay so the way we’re doing things isn’t ideal; but what if the new way is worse?

3. People might have trouble adjusting.

4. We’ve always done it that way.

5. But John was the one who instituted it and he’s a really great guy…

6. I realise the new way is better, but people might be offended by the change, or find it emotionally difficult to deal with it.

7. We’ve always done it that way.

8. We’re Anglicans.

9. Everyone’s really attached to the way we do it.

10. We’ve always done it that way.

Can you think of more reasons? Please add them, if they’re good we’ll put them up.

St Andy’s is having a Men’s Breakfast in a couple of weeks. Here’s the promo video.

Not sure that it meets all the requirements envisaged by my last men’s ministry post…

This week I decided to see what other blogs on the internet had to offer the reading public. At first I moseyed on over to a few of the links found here on the Resolute itself, and started reading some Philip Griffin. Then I hopped over to a blog called Between Two Worlds. When I discovered both Between Two Worlds and Philip Griffin linked to a blog called Reformation 21, I figured I’d better check it out. I flipped over to the about page and read this, Reformation 21 is, “created to serve, edify, and educate Christians… and challenge Christians to think and grow biblically.” Sounded pretty solid to me, but as I continued my stroll through the net I was less than impressed.

I figured I’d see what Mark Driscoll’s blog was like because I’d heard he is kind of a big deal these days. I googled ‘mark driscoll’s blog’ and found myself on a page called, The Resurgence. I found Driscoll’s profile and was dismayed by what I read. What I read was an ad for Driscoll and his church, an ad that makes little or no reference to Jesus, God or the Bible. Instead it referenced a variety of Christian and secular publications as well as the numbers of people in attendance at his church as reasons for the success of his ministry. I was deeply troubled by this, but as I continued across the net I was met time and time again with similar pages. Now, I don’t want this to be an attack on Driscoll, I have no idea if he had any role in creating what I read, and I only mentioned it because it was the first such example I came across and it happens to be a high profile one.

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Dear Friend,

Let me tell you why I’m a Christian.

I’m a good person. Well, most of the time. Like, I don’t really do much bad stuff.

And I know that God doesn’t like that I do do some bad stuff. In fact it makes God a bit angry. So angry that he can’t be around me.

But because God loves me so much he still wants to be friends with me. So he decided he’d better send Jesus to save me.

So Jesus died on the cross, basically God got angry with Jesus instead of me. All I gotta do now is be mates with Jesus Christ.

Now J.C. and me are best mates, he’s my bro. He totally looks after me, makes sure I don’t get hurt, if I need anything, Jesus is my man.

He’s got me sorted for heaven too. It’s going to be one big party, sooo much fun. Everyone cool will be there, my mates Bill and Trev and Sal and Bazza.

Can’t wait!

Signed,

Me, Me, Me.

Church jargon is assumed knowledge in most Christian gatherings. It’s also unlikely that anyone will explain it to new-comers. So we’ve created this basic primer. Unfortunately this is a little harder than it should be since the definition depends a lot on the users beliefs. And then the Americans also have their own definitions for everything too… they just want to be different.

Anyways here goes:

• Evangelical is a term used to describe Christians who believe the bible. You’d think it’d be a synonym for ‘Christian’… but some how it isn’t…
• Liberal is used to describe ‘Christians’ who think they can make up stuff.
• Holy, sanctified, sacred and saint are all related and mean kind of something like: to be set apart, declared holy.
• Hallelujah isn’t even English. When the Bible translators did their translating they forgot to translate it. It means something like “Praise the Lord”.
• Church means gathering, meeting or assembly. Although most people think it’s the name given to pointy roofed, old, cold, locked up buildings that Christians meet in once a week.
• Justification means to be declared righteous.
• Righteous means to meet God’s standard.
• Sin is when we rebel against God.
• Grace is a girls name. It also means a free, undeserved gift.
• Faith is also a girls name. It means trust. Although some people use it to refer to an ooie-gooie feeling inside them.
• Service means to work for someone else’s benefit, ie. to give help. People talk about church meetings as being ‘services’, one of those oddities since God doesn’t really need our help.
• Worship is often used to describe the singing bit of church. Although of course it’s way bigger than that. In English it means to give worth to something… It means to desire, treasure, be devoted to something, and for Christians that something is God. One of the Greek words translated ‘worship’ literally means to lie down flat on your face.
• Minister means servant. Although now it’s also used to describe people who run churches. Also known as ‘pastors’.
• Pray literally means ask. When Christian’s say they are ‘praying’ they mean ‘talking to God’.
• Blessed – Christians will pronounce it ‘bless-Ed’. Or ‘blessd’. Not sure when to use which pronounciation.
• Christ is not Jesus’ surname. It’s the Greek for the Hebrew word Messiah. Does that help? Christ is actually Jesus’ title, which means ‘annointed one’, so Jesus Christ is like saying “Jesus: God’s-Chosen-Ruler”.
• Gospel means important news. The most important news is that Jesus is lord.

Anything I left out or you reckon I got wrong?

Imagine you’re running a church. Everything’s going really well; you preach faithfully every week, you have strong numbers and an outward looking focus. You’re even able to appoint a youth pastor. Then one week in a staff meeting the youth pastor mentions that a growing number of the youth are disappointed with the songs that you are singing in church. They can’t complain about the songs lyrics but feel that the music is somewhat lack-lustre. They look at their friend’s churches and see that their music is so much better; they even mention that the songs at KYCK (Katoomba Youth Convention) are better. You’re inclined to take their concerns seriously because you believe that a vibrant youth ministry is important to the church. So you ask some of the musicians to come up with a revised song list.

You can’t profess to have a great knowledge of music so you leave that up to the musicians but you’re still careful to check the words of all the songs. At first you’re a little unsure. You feel a lot of the songs don’t seem to say much… but the musicians assure you that these songs have the best tunes. So you let them in… it’s not like they’re bad theology… they just don’t say much… but they don’t say anything wrong.

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A quite time is a common Christian practice of reading the Bible and praying. Many Christians seek to spend between half an hour and an hour each day reading the Bible and praying, many other Christians seek to avoid doing so.

This article looks at Bible reading, and offers 5 simple steps on how to avoid bible reading:

1. Get tired. This will allow you to use the “I’m too tired” excuse. Stay up late. Facebook and Wikipedia are good ways to waste time while staying up late.
2. Get busy. This will allow you to use the “I’m too busy” excuse. Find meaningless things to do such as Facebook and Wikipedia. This will also help you complete step 1. Watching excessive TV can also be helpful. Important, life changing programs such as Australian Idol, Farmer Wants a Wife and Top Gear are appropriate time fillers.
3. Choose an ineffective time of day for Bible reading. Specifically, if you are a morning person then read the bible at night, and if you are not a morning person then keep committing to read it in the morning. The aim is to make it more difficult than it needs to be.
4. Never be honest about how frequently (or infrequently) you actually read the Bible. When discussing your bible reading habits the correct answer is “My quiet times are going great”. If you were to be honest and say that you are struggling to regularly read the Bible then you will find that friends will want to help motivate and encourage you in this struggle.
5. Avoid any kind of reading plan. Reading plans, whether formal publications or informal self defined plans, will provide too much structure and motivation for bible reading. They would cause the reader to become disciplined which would not help avoid further bible reading.